According to Blockworks, Gio Vicioso, CME's head of crypto, said that his firm has been prepared for the bitcoin rally taking place on Tuesday. Bitcoin briefly touched $35,000 on Monday before settling around $33,000. The rally is fueled largely by the hope for a spot bitcoin ETF approval, which the market may not get until early next year. Vicioso mentioned that the investor community is abuzz with anticipation for the approval of a spot bitcoin ETF, and a diversified mix of participants are coming into the space, including crypto natives, crypto-focused funds, institutional macro hedge funds, and banks.

CME's third-quarter report supports Vicioso's comments, as it found that interest in both bitcoin and ether derivatives hit highs. While it may be too soon to say that crypto spring is here, the momentum that the market saw after CoinTelegraph falsely reported that BlackRock's bitcoin ETF had gotten the green light from the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows that the investor community is preparing themselves for that particular event and positioning portfolios accordingly. Other experts, such as eToro's Callie Cox and Alt Tab Capital's Michael Silberberg, also believe that crypto has a lot of positive catalysts ahead of it, with Silberberg expecting the rally to last until April of next year.

Vicioso also noted that institutions are now talking about things like tokenization and how to deploy or employ a tokenized strategy into their business, which is driving more interest in bitcoin and ether as the backbone for tokenization is blockchain technology. This increased interest in implementing the technology is also helping to drive value in the individual coins led by bitcoin.